Hear Your Footsteps
by blackbutterflies
Summary: Owen is back in Iraq after a fight with Cristina. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

I believe that if I should die,  
and you were to walk near my grave,  
from the very depths of the earth  
I would hear your footsteps.

_-Benito Perez Galdos_-

It's hot. He can hear men screaming, crying. Things are burning all around him. People are bleeding to death. Including him.

He looks around for his supplies, but he can't find them anywhere. Nothing is recognizable anymore, especially the bodies. He staggers over to the closest man. The man's legs are blown off, and he's writhing around and screaming and looking where his legs used to be. Oh God, he's saying. _Ohgodohgodohgodohgod_...

He rips a piece of cloth to tie around the man's bloodied stumps, then gasps with the effort. Sharp pains shoot around inside his chest. He looks for a wound, but he's covered in blood, his and who knows who else's. No time for that now. He gathers his strength again and ties the cloth around the other man's leg tightly. The screaming has tapered off to quiet sobbing. He tells him he's going to be just fine, and as he crawls away he hopes he doesn't suffer too much before he dies.

He goes to the next man who is still in a recognizable shape, but he's already dead. His eyes are open, wide and brown. A foot long piece of metal is sticking out of his chest. He goes to the next man, but he's dead too. He wipes blood and tears out of his eyes and goes to the next man. He's still breathing. Barely.

Black spots dance across his eyes, and he shakes his head, trying to chase them away. Cristina whispers to him, tells him to hold on for her, for them. It's funny, because they haven't talked for months. As usual, he'd managed to ruin everything, and instead of waiting for things to cool off, he'd re-enlisted. They hadn't talked since.

He does what he can for the man, which isn't much, and then he realizes that there's no one left to save. He settles down heavily and unbuttons his uniform, biting his lip to keep from crying out when the shirt pulls away from his wounds. There is a large hole in his abdomen, edges pulsing black. Blood spills out of him. He knows the signs, and he's bleeding fast.

He pushes his shirt in the hole and tries to stay awake. He thinks of Cristina.

He feels around in his pocket carefully, inhaling sharply through his nose when he shifts into a bad position. In his pants pocket he finds a scrap of paper and the end of a pencil. He writes.

His face is wet with sweat and his hair is plastered to his head. He breathes in short, shallow pants. Cristina is there, brushing his hair back. Her hand is cool on his forehead. He smiles up at her, and she smiles back sadly. He wishes he could help her. He wishes she would hold him.

The faces crowd around them; the faces of the men he could not save. It's only fitting that now he should join them.

He thinks he can hear the chopper in the distance, coming for whoever might still be alive, but he's too tired to wait for them. He signs his name carefully, and then he's gone.

* * *

Sorry this is so depressing, I'm going to write something happier after I finish the next part, which will be Cristina's POV.


	2. Chapter 2

Remember this forever, then:  
I cannot imagine not loving you,  
even when this body is gone.

_-Valentine for Zepher, Age 12-_

It's raining. She stands by the fresh pile of dirt, the ground heaped with flowers. She can see her own muddy bouquet. They are the same kind Owen had brought her that night of their supposed to be first date. She kneels down and tries to wipe the dirt off the petals but only succeeds in getting the hem of her dress dirty. She's always hated dresses.

The funeral was very nice, at least as nice as a funeral can ever really be. Most of the hospital had shown up, so it hadn't seemed strange that she was there. Most of the staff had known that they were dating, or at least suspected, and she felt like she'd scream if one more person looked at her sympathetically or tried to offer her their condolences. She didn't deserve it, because it was her fault that he was dead.

She'd sat through the whole thing dry-eyed, unable to cry. She hadn't cried once since she'd overheard the news (in the hospital cafeteria, a rather horrible way to find out the only man you'd ever really loved had died in the middle of a desert with no one even there to hold his hand). She'd felt a sickening shock, then disbelief accompanied with a wave of nausea that eventually faded to a dull, throbbing grief that overtook her life.

She'd hate herself if she cried in front of everyone but she hated herself more for not crying. He deserved her tears. It was the last thing she could give him, and she was such a cold bitch that she couldn't even do that.

So she stands by his grave and tries to forget that the last thing she'd ever said to him was _I don't love you._

*****

"Cristina?" a wavery voice says hesitantly. She looks up and into the saddest blue eyes she has ever seen. Owen's eyes. His mother, she realizes. She had been sitting with the other crying people and a soldier with no legs. Reddish grey hair frames her grief stricken face. She is pretty but she lookes old. She is holding a flag folded into a triangle and a piece of crumpled paper.

"Yes?" she replies. She wonders how she knows who she is.

The woman looks down and blinks back tears, then extends her hand towards her. After a moment Cristina takes the note, and the woman's fingers linger on it for just a second too long. She stares into space.

"Owen wanted you to have this" she says finally, and there is something hard in her voice. She blames her for Owen going away, she realizes, and why shouldn't she? She had driven him away, back to the place he hated most on earth, and he had come back in a box.

"Whatever he wrote to you, it was important enough that he spent his last minutes writing it." Cristina stands perfectly still and stares at the ground, her fingers curled around the note. Eventually his mother walks away.

It takes a long time to gather up the courage to even look at it. _Cristina_ is scrawled on the note. She unfolds it and reads.

_Cris_

_I don't think I'm going to make it this time, and if I don't I need you to know that I didn't mean any of the things I said, and I don't think you did either. Please don't feel bad--it was my choice to come back and my only regret it is I didn't get to spend the rest of my life with you. Try to forget the bad parts and just remember all the good times we had. Tell Mom I love her. _

_I have always loved you _

_Owen_

When the tears finally come, she kneels down, her knees muddy, and she touches the ground where he lays six feet below. She doesn't deserve absolution, but he did his best to give it to her.

She rubs her stomach, which is just beginning to swell.

"It's going to be alright" she whispers. "We're going to be alright."

* * *

The depressingness is over! Hope the 'she's' didn't get confusing.


End file.
